Chapter XII: Some of the Difficulties of Reform

"FRONTIER" LAW AND PRACTICE. CAUGHT IN A NORTHER IN NO-MAN'S LAND

It is neither necessary nor possible to give a full history of all the raids that during the brief period of little more than a year broke up organized lawlessness in that stray corner of the nation and redeemed an abandoned land. The general plan was the same in all. The early morning hour; the hack and the Winchester; the surprise attack, and the pleasant drive home with the guests duly hand-cuffed and shackled; these were features common to each episode. Though conducted against desperate men, it was a bloodless warfare. Nobody was killed--scarcely a gun was fired. Bill McDonald's career was not to be always like that. There was to be shooting enough and blood-letting too, but the No-man's Land campaign was peculiar in the absence of these customary attributes of border warfare.

Yet there are one or two aspects of the happenings of that period which may not be overlooked here. As before suggested, the administrators of the law were not always to be relied upon. Some of them were actually in league with the law-breakers; others were honest enough, but afraid of them. But there was still another sort, who being both honest and courageous lacked information. Sometimes this resulted in curious complications which were annoying and discouraging to an officer. Often, the results were rather humorous in their nature. The following is an illustration of frontier jurisprudence.

McDonald had heard of a cow thief in No-man's Land who was working on his own hook--a sporadic case, as one might say--and went over to arrest him. He descended upon him in an unexpected moment, and though the outlaw strenuously protested that it being Sunday the law of arrest did not hold good, Deputy Bill conveyed him across the border and down into Roberts County where the cattle had been stolen and where there was a justice of the peace--it being hardly worth while to take a single prisoner to Wichita Falls. McDonald's idea was that the justice would have authority to bind his prisoner over until such time as the grand jury of that district should meet and indict him in regular form.

Now, Roberts County was a wild desolate place in those days. There was no town anywhere about, and few people. There had been no previous call for administration of the law of any sort, and up to that time no case had come before this justice of the peace. On the arrival of McDonald with his prisoner, his honor convened court with a sort of a helpless look. His office was merely a title, so far as he was concerned, and the wide realm of the law was to him an unexplored country. He had a copy of the "Revised Statutes," however, which he now took down and examined, perhaps for the first time. With McDonald's help he found the section which related to cattle stealing, and the penalty. Regular procedure, with indictments and trial by jury were as nothing to him. He only knew that he had been elected to his office, and that his duty was to administer the law as laid down. He read the law as pointed out, and assumed a judicial severity.

"You own up that you stole them cattle?" he said to the prisoner.

The prisoner nodded.

"Then as justice of the peace of this county I hereby send you to the penitentiary for ten years."

McDonald gasped.

"Judge," he said, "I don't believe that's quite regular."

"Why; ain't that the law?"

"Well, yes, but you see he's entitled to trial, an' mebbe it would be just as well to bind him over under a good heavy bond, and if he can't raise it send him to jail over in Canadian until the grand jury meets. Of course I only mention that as being the usual way of doing things."

The justice looked a little disappointed.

"Why, yes, of course, if you want it that way," he said, "but the man's guilty and I thought you'd like to put the thing through as quick and easy as possible, and save expense. Oh, well, any way to suit you. I'll make his bond heavy enough, anyway." He paused to think, perhaps trying to imagine a sum large enough for a man who had plead guilty to the heinous crime of cattle stealing. "I'll put him under a heavy bond--a _good heavy bond_--I'll make it three hundred dollars!"

It will be seen that an official who was given to inspirations such as these could become a trial, even with the best intentions in the world; and there were others who added arrogance to their ignorance, and connivance at crime. Nor were the raids into No-man's Land altogether pleasure excursions even though Deputies Bill McDonald and Lon Burson, with their headlong tactics and general disregard of death, had things pretty much their own way when it came to the final show-down. There were long wearying journeys in a trailless land and long night vigils when bone and muscle and nerve were racked and the whole body cried out for sleep. The onset might be swift and reckless, once begun, but the preparation for that moment was cautious and slow and often beset with difficulties. The few dwellers in No-man's Land really desirous of getting rid of the outlaws, were afraid to reveal their anxiety, to give anything resembling information, or even to offer shelter to the officers. They knew that to manifest any interest on the side of law and order would incur the enmity of the gangs and bring down reprisal swift and bloody. McDonald and Burson realized this, and, however severe the conditions of weather and weariness, faced them, rather than impose any risk upon men whose only offense was to dwell among very bad neighbors.

At one time the deputies were after a gang of five men, wanted for murder and theft, and were driving from Higgins into No-man's Land, with hack and team, their saddles loaded in behind, as usual. It was late in the year, now, and suddenly in the swift Texas fashion a norther came down, with piercing wind and fine driving snow. If the reader has never seen a Texas norther, or a Dakota blizzard, he will hardly understand their predicament. The wind leaps up in a wild gale almost in an instant; the air from being balmy takes on a sudden bitterness that wrings the body and numbs the heart and pinches the very soul. Then the snow comes, fine and blinding--sharp and hard as glass. No living being was ever created that could survive long in the face of a storm like that. Cattle know when a norther is coming and find shelter in canyons, or gather into thick bunches in the open, their heads to the center. Birds speed away to the south, ahead of it, or find shelter in hollows and crannies until the demon has passed by. A storm like that always means death. The Texas norther and the Dakota blizzard have strewn the prairies with bones.

McDonald and Burson in the face of such a tempest tried to press on, hoping to find a shelter of some sort--anything that would break the terrible wind. But everywhere was only the wide prairie, level as the sea and lost now in the swirling drift. Night was coming on rapidly, and unless a place for camp was found soon, their case would be hopeless, indeed. It seemed to them that they had drifted for hours, battling against the norther--though it probably was less than one hour--when they came upon some stacks of prairie hay, which indicated the habitation of men. Without seeking further, they made for the shelter of the stacks, burrowed themselves and their horses into them, allowing the latter to feed liberally from the hay. There they remained all night and until the afternoon of the next day, the men without food. The storm abated then, and the officers undiscouraged, pressed on, reaching the outlaw camp late in the afternoon, instead of at their favorite morning hour.

The surprise was quite as complete, however, for the last thing that those bandits expected was that two officers should suddenly appear out of that white devastation to take them to jail. They were too much astonished to attempt resistance and were on their way to Wichita Falls that night, following the road which earlier in the year so many of their kind had taken.

Indeed it was this capture at the end of 1888 that marked about the close of the heaviest work in that particular section. The year's crusade had demonstrated that No-man's Land was not big enough to hold a band of cow thieves and two deputies like Bill McDonald and Lon Burson at the same time. It was no encouragement to a band of hard-working outlaws, just as they had got their plant established and things well under way to be suddenly pounced down upon and put out of business by two men who had no regard for the customary rules of fighting, but just rushed right in with a lot of impertinent orders and an assortment of hand-cuffs and always had a big hack ready to start at a moment's notice for Wichita Falls.

"What is the use?" one of the freebooters is said to have complained, "A fellow no more than gets started when these dam' fools come in and upset everything."

What _was_ the use? Such of the No-man's Land fraternity as still remained unhung and out of jail set out for other fields of labor. Some of them located in the more barren districts of New Mexico and Arizona. Some of them settled in the further places of what was then known as the Cherokee Strip, where they joined with congenial spirits in that territory, and pretending to be engaged in agriculture--for they were in a more settled country--Indian country--continued their old business at the new stand. These we shall meet again presently, for if they had said good-by to Bill McDonald, he had not said good-by to them. It would require new tactics to deal with the new conditions--to identify the outlaw in the pretended agriculturist, and to get evidence for his conviction. It would require the development of another talent in Bill McDonald's make-up, and that talent was ready for cultivation, as we shall see.